7 frameworks to help you build a better developer portal

presentation recording

This month we are celebrating the one year anniversary of our partnership with Apigee. One year in, after we worked on more than 20 developer portals, we are also celebrating that we successfully specialised our Drupal company on API documentation.

After a lot of reading and thinking about developer portals, research into API documentation components and over 10 API events, I’ve gained a few new perspectives on API documentation that I think could be valuable for API architects and product owners. I synthesized the ideas and frameworks we developed in a presentation for Apigee’s API forum (Paris, Amsterdam, and London) and for the London APIdays. I felt my presentation at the API forum in Amsterdam was the best paced, and the most complete, that is why I’ve published it on Youtube.

Video recording:

In my talk (presented at Apigee’s API Tech Forum in Amsterdam on November 10, 2016), I explore 7 thought frameworks that will help you build better Developer Portals for your APIs:

The importance of Developer Portals

Portals should drive adoption and reduce support costs: without proper documentation, an API team will spend countless hours on workshops, trainings and support. Developer portals are also a trust signal.

The Developer Portal as a trust signal

Developer Portal Stakeholders

Sales, Product, Marketing and Support areas should be in balance. I discuss the role of Developer evangelists and API documentarians.

Developer Portal stakeholders

The Developer’s Journey

A developer portal can help creating viral loops and can turn consumers into product advocates. I discuss the function of marketing, try out areas, tutorials, conceptual documentation and integration galleries.

The Developer's journey

The site owner’s jobs to be done

A developer portal helps you to inspire, educate and authorise developers.

The site owner's jobs

Types of Portal architecture

What are the architectural API archetypes? What are their characteristics?

Architectural type: Catalogue of APIs

Technology choice

What choices are there to be made. I highlight API specification formats, documentation formats, and Portal technology.

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About the author

Kristof van Tomme

CEO, Co-founder

Kristof Van Tomme is an open source strategist and architect. He is the CEO and co-founder of Pronovix. He’s got a degree in bioengineering and is a regular speaker at conferences in the API, DevRel, and technical writing communities. For a few years now he’s been building bridges between the documentation and Drupal community. He is co-organiser of the London Write the Docs meetup, and cheerleader for the Amsterdam and Brussels Write the Docs meetup groups. This year he is working on a number of new initiatives to help API product owners learn from their peers (API the Docs and the API product owner masterminds).